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Sol Sanders | Follow the money No. 90 The Euro is dead, long live the euro!
Latest from Uncle Sol. A version of this column is scheduled to be published Monday, Oct. 31, 2001, in The Washington Times. -- Chris
Follow the money No. 90 -- The Euro is dead, long live the euro!
By Sol Sanders <solsanders@cox.net>
In the spring of 1947, I was on deck as one of that dying breed of transatlantic liners was tugged into Le Havre. Despite decades of experience there was incredible confusion as French stevedores hassled over tying up ropes. A rail companion, a French Jewish refugee returning from American wartime refuge, declaimed, “Eh voila! L’élan francaise”. My 90 hours Berlitz preparation for being a “sois-dissant” Paris student, unabashedly imitating my 20s predecessors, had done me well. But I hadn’t a clue what “élan” meant, so he went into a “cartésien” dissertation on how Frenchmen were individuals as none other, cooperation comes hard if at all, and the genius of the civilization resides in that peculiarity. [Gen. Charles DeGaulle: How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?]
As “Europe” falls apart, it’s natural each of its 27 members would be doing their thing. For the moment – while a search goes on for a missing one trillion Euros [$1, 400 billion] – the Euro has been rescued as a common currency for 17 members, and, hopefully, the whole Europe Project to unite a continent for peace and progress survives.
But continuing crisis, whatever its final outcome, is already rearranging geopolitical pieces on the European chessboard:
London smugly congratulates itself for refusing to enter what is now a failing common currency, preserving The City’s worldwide financial role. But Prime Minister David Cameron backbenchers’ called for a referendum on British EC membership. While put down, they will haunt his promised negotiations to rearrange the UK’s relationship with Brussels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will fiercely resist efforts to rearrange London’s other “special relationship”, perhaps forcing a showdown on whether you can be half in and half out. She has rammed through a call for more EC economic and political integration, swapping it for her recalcitrant Bundestag’s veto over more bailout. But at her back are obstinate voters reluctant to pick up the chips for southern bankrupt members of a common market Germany’s export drive exploited so shamelessly.
Chancellor Merkel bested French President Nikolas Sarkozy, facing a tough election next year after failing to produce his promised marketizing of the French economy. He wanted a super-Q-easing by the European Central Bank to save the Euro and inflate. In that grandiose French play, he proposed “comprehensive” settlement while the methodical Teutons wanted step by step – even at the risk of more minicrises and general economic doldrums as austerity brakes growth.
Italy’s tragicomedy starring Prime Minister Silvio Berlesconi featured parliamentary fisticuffs. Worse, his painful promised belt-tightening for the Italian welfare state built since it beat off a near successful attempted Communist coup d’etat in 1948 could get its ultimate test. Does the family, the cornerstone of Italian culture since the Romans, remain strong enough to buoy a society with the lowest birthrate in Europe, the mother of modern international immigration now facing invading hordes on the North African coastal periphery?
Initial market falderal was heartening. News that America, the heart of the world economy still for all the talk of shifting patterns, had grown in the last quarter instead of drooping into doubledip recession, heartened the optimists.
But there is bound to be a second look. And when the spectacles come out, analysts will find less detail to the Euro settlement than headlines. Germany is still keeping a staying hand on the throttle of the European Central Bank. The European Economic Stability Fund still looks more like an impoverished debt set-aside than a mini-IMF. And the controversial Eurobonds proposal hangs over the dusty debris left by two officials’ talkathons
President Sarkozy’s call to China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiapao for help in bailouts and recapitalizing European banks is fantasy. Beijing plays a completely mercantilist hand. With its exports threatened and repeated promises to its own increasingly restless to shift to a more consumer-oriented economy, China’s more than $3 trillion in monetary reserves [20% in vacillating Euros] is mortgaged by a deflating dollar and its own incipient inflation. Ditto, Brazil – in a welter of official corruption scandals – and India with seemingly uncontrolled inflation. President Barack Obama’s op-ed proposing a firewall against a European debacle added insult to injury. U.S. banks sometime back stopped Eurolending -- with their exposure still unknown.
Help, if it comes, will look to those glorious European traditions – all of them, as varied and contradictory as they are.
sws-10-29-11
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I'm very sorry but this is another crap article confusing the Euro currency with EUR denominated bonds and bank bailouts and displaying zero insight into the true forces involved. The Euro will be defended politically to the death and will survive even as the whole continent is reduced to flaming ruins, dust and ashes.
+1 trillion
My thoughts exactly, brother!
That is what European US citizens are striving to accomplish. Does not mean they will succeed but they pushing in that direction.
"deflating dollar" - Should that be devaluing dollar?
If the devil is in the details then the details are wrong:
EC (as in European Community) ceased existing in 2002; it's EU now
Wen Jiapao = Wen Jiabao (maybe transcription challenge)
Silvio Berlesconi = Silvio BungaBunga Berlusconi (no transcription challenge)
"soi-dissant" = soi-disant
As europe falls apart....you sound very condescending...for an American, whose economy is even worse off, if you include the financial derivative bubble that nobody wants to even own up to in the land of instant transparence. How about l'élan américain as subject...? Lets have a good laugh together!
I am of the opinion that only the Chinese will eventually come out ahead when the financial bubble goes Hindeburg, or Titanic.
...for an American, whose economy is even worse off,
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
No. The US economy is fine.
US citizens want to push forward metrics that have proven only one thing: their uselessness.
US citizens from USA are used to exporting their shit on other countries.
A serious disruption can only happen if:
-they accumulate shit faster than they export it
-they lose their capacity to export their shit onto others
-others can no longer put up with USA shit (loss of resilience)
Fact that US citizens push group over individuals does not mean that the US of A will go through this mess as an undivided nation. Some US citizens from USA are being tossed of the bowl, losing their entitlements and that is the cause of their resent.
Depends, if they play nice with Russia. Everyone has got to eat, and the Chinese have a lot of mouths to feed.
Really? But so many on this site report that Chinese do not care about letting chinese starve to death. So What?
They'll play nice with the whole world, not just Russia, who'll buy their goods. Right now they are top dogs as world factory and I don't think with their unlimited cheap work force they are going to do a Nike-Apple outsource strategy for a long time. As for arable land, they have their own AND they are ready to buy in Africa too. As for energy they'll get top dog status in ME and Russia if/when USA-EU tanks under debt burden.
I'll never forgive the French for this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i99k7nCnVwM
Sarkozy w/ makeup?
Empty article. Nothing in it.
Selling nothing against hard assets seems to work fine in this US driven world.
Yeah but you've got to love Paris.
How can you love Paris, it's full of Frenchmen?
there are some french women...but you might only like your own kind of hamburger steak. Why go anywhere when you can stay at home and drown in your own navel worship.
It's also full of music, lights, art, and beautiful women.
Ste. Tropez sans suit.
Ou est, le papier?
Paris is wonderful, Provence is wonderful, French food is wonderful. It's just that there are too many fucking French.
F**k St Tropez ...charged €22 for spaghetti and clams (delivered near-cold) plus €7 for a Coka Cola last Thursday.. left the rip-off joint on Friday
Cannes is bigger and better... Spain's better still
At least until this up-coming Eurozone mushroom cloud. Then it'll be fascism or communism teetering on a knife-edge across many coutries in Europe... thank fuck there's no border posts any longer for a quick exit in your car!
Also French music is horrible
I'll take their food over that of the Brits.
Except for Classical. Debussy, Massenet, Satie, Saint-Saens are amongst my favourites. But they are all dead (Or, in the immortal words of Monty Python, they are "Decomposing composers") Now, back to my original post.................................
And why, and it is truly universal, that the rest of the world can't stand the fucking French and their insufferable arogance?
It would be nice to do a gallup poll world wide comparing who is more disliked French or US?
Give you one guess...but its just my personal hunch...
because so many jews living in France ?